I've just gotten my Japanese copy and a few of the errors in the printed lyrics are pretty laughable. I first noticed it with "Almost Ideal Eyes." It doesn't matter much, because of course most of these lyrics have appeared with other CDs in the past, but I'm very much amused by lines like

"You rub your eye a little and appear to blink," from Dust, turning into:
"Plug your eye in this little pier to play."

I'm guessing someone less-than-fluent in English wrote these out phonetically. Because I doubt EC would change the words to something so inarticulate.

This album gets better with each listen. The Orkest just swings and Elvis' enjoyment of what he's doing just beams out. The sound of the disc is also so vivid. The recording of the Dutch radio broadcast from the time can only just hint at how funky this recording is. Presumably this has a lot to do with the mixing done in the Capitol Studios , Los Angeles by Al Schmitt.

What Mr Schmitt has done with Almost Blue is a good example. About 17 seconds in the massed-strings are counter-pointed by some very groovy plucking of violin strings. The same effect is there on the radio recording but is way down in the mix. This change of emphasis really lifts the track. Similar subtleties abound .

Having had access to both the Japanese and Australian editions of the album I prefer the former ; this has everything to do with it's extra track '...Dust'. In terms of sequencing it's well placed as a bit rowdiness in between 'Almost Blue' and 'Speak Darkly , My Angel'. The applause from 'Blue overlaps with the start of '...Dust' , with a similar bridge with '.., My angel'. There is a real flow to the presentation. On the Aussie disc 'Blue's applause ends , with a split second of white noise before '..., My Angel'. Pairing two such similarly slow tracks in this way causes a real 'dip' to a listen to the album.

'....Dust' also has a great guitar performance. Did Elvis play guitar that night in July '04? The sleeve credits Orkest guitarist Peter Tiehuis with solos on 'Hora Decubitus' and 'Episode of Blonde'. A line in the Japanese booklet, at the end of Elvis' comments on each song , reads ' No comments available for '...Dust' since it is a bonus track ' ; perhaps a similar criteria applies to the later musician credits . If it is Mr Tiehuis playing he does a very good job, echoing Elvis' WIWC playing style .

MistakenForLilies wrote:I've just gotten my Japanese copy and a few of the errors in the printed lyrics are pretty laughable. I first noticed it with "Almost Ideal Eyes." It doesn't matter much, because of course most of these lyrics have appeared with other CDs in the past, but I'm very much amused by lines like

"You rub your eye a little and appear to blink," from Dust, turning into:"Plug your eye in this little pier to play."

I'm guessing someone less-than-fluent in English wrote these out phonetically. Because I doubt EC would change the words to something so inarticulate.

I got a Japanese REM release one time, and the printed lyrics to:

"Divide your coats in pearls of haste
I'm looking for the laid waste
A fall the things I cannot taste
And this not the racy race
Baseball fly"

Not that the original lyrics were less obtuse:

"Divide your cultured pearls in haste
I'm looking for to lay to waste
Of all the things I cannot taste
And this not the racy race
They spoke of"

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
--William Shakespeare

johnfoyle wrote: '....Dust' also has a great guitar performance. Did Elvis play guitar that night in July '04? The sleeve credits Orkest guitarist Peter Tiehuis with solos on 'Hora Decubitus' and 'Episode of Blonde'. A line in the Japanese booklet, at the end of Elvis' comments on each song , reads ' No comments available for '...Dust' since it is a bonus track ' ; perhaps a similar criteria applies to the later musician credits . If it is Mr Tiehuis playing he does a very good job, echoing Elvis' WIWC playing style .

I was there in July 2004 and I have the television broadcast on DVD: it's clearly EC who plays electric guitar.

Since you put me down, it seems i've been very gloomy. You may laugh but pretty girls look right through me.

" A riposte to those who would categorise and contain him. This latest leap is all the more staggering for the fact that it's merely what the artist did on his holidays: a repertoire of his songs both well-known and obscure, meticulously rearranged for a live stand with a Dutch jazz orchestra. " The Age (Melbourne, Australia)

Costello said that "this record may explain what I've been doing during the last twelve years when I haven't had an electric guitar in my hands."

To watch video interview with Elvis talking about the album, please visit:

'My Flame Burns Blue' is a live concert album recorded at the Hague with the 52-piece jazz orchestra Metropole Orkest, also featuring Steve Nieve on piano and was conducted by Vince Mendoza. Also included is a bonus disc with a forty-five minute suite from 'Il Sogno,' Costello's first full length orchestral work.

In other news, Verve Forecast will release 'The River in Reverse' in June, Costello's partnership with pianist, songwriter and producer Allen Toussaint. This collaboration, recorded in Los Angeles and New Orleans at the end of 2005, "reverberates with the power of emotional eyewitness, born of the devastation just outside the studio's front door." (David Fricke, Rolling Stone)

I watched the promovideo and at the end there is a little surprise: there is video footage of the actual recording of Il Sogno in 2002!! You can see the London Symphony Orchestra and Michael Tilson Thomas at work.

Since you put me down, it seems i've been very gloomy. You may laugh but pretty girls look right through me.

I have heard a downloaded copy...it sounds ace! The best track imho is Favourite Hour...the only odd thing about it is some of the tracks, like Clubland, are in slightly different tempos to the studio versions, yet they're sung at the original tempo..still a pretty good reason to shell out for Il Sogno again though!

I love the arrangement of Clubland. I just find irritating the way Elvis sings "Clubland" with this trailing-off, glissando (is that the right term, my high school band days have long since past) thing going on. Seems to cheapen the song IMO. Still love the album though!

Well, I think in general Elvis tends to overpower songs when he sings on them. Which, in general, I dig. But I'm sorry, one man just isn't overpowering an orchestra. There's no way.

So what we're left with, at least in my opinion, is a bit of a power struggle. The clash makes for some pretty interesting moments but overall I find it somewhat exhausting. That's my only real beef with these recordings.

Btw, I could swear at some point during Clubland the band interpolates a quick bar or two from King Horse. Am I crazy? Are there other Costello nuggets hidden throughout these arrangements?

The new Elvis Costello album is coming soon!!! I heard some of the songs and they sound great. He basically just takes his classic songs and re-works them with a full jazz orchestra. You can hear the new album here:
http://www2.fanscape.com/elviscostello/ ... /2728.aspx

Costello's back in arthouse mode, taking a swingin' if bloodless wander through some lavish re-arrangements of his back catalogue (Clubland gets a lush cha-cha; Watching the Detectives is recast as a noir soundtrack and so on) while backed by Dutch jazz ensemble the Metropole Orkest in front of a festival audience at the Hague - just the place to remind what a clever clogs he can be.

CJ1016 wrote:The new Elvis Costello album is coming soon!!! I heard some of the songs and they sound great. He basically just takes his classic songs and re-works them with a full jazz orchestra. You can hear the new album here:http://www2.fanscape.com/elviscostello/ ... /2728.aspx

Crossover artists — musicians, composers or performers who win fame in one musical genre but decide to try their hand at another — have been getting considerable ink during the past decade or so. Classical crossovers like the Three Tenors and cellist Yo-Yo Ma have been quite successful at this, selling CDs at a good clip and winning new audiences.

Crossover rockers, however, continue to be a mixed bag. Sir Elton John and Danny Elfman have proved surprisingly adept at film music. But Sir Paul McCartney's repeated high-profile attempts to compose serious music can be charitably described as flops.

The latest and most interesting addition to the small club of crossover rockers is Elvis Costello, who began his musical pilgrimage in the early 1990s, when he started digging classical music played by the Brodsky Quartet. He ended up collaborating with them. Not surprisingly, Mr. Costello's own father and grandfather had been jazz musicians, and he also began to warm up to this genre as well.

Like many rock musicians, he initially had no clue about musical notation. But he eventually taught himself how to write music down on paper and create scores for small ensembles, even composing on commission an entire ballet score, "Il Sogno," based on Shakespeare's "Midsummer Night's Dream." Issued as a CD in 2004, the ballet was well reviewed, although hardly a best-seller — a major problem for any budding crossover artist whose fans always insist on more of the oldies.

Like George Gershwin, who routinely collaborated with others when penning Broadway shows and arranging works like "Rhapsody in Blue," it's clear that Mr. Costello has benefited from the help of his collaborators, such as Michael Tilson Thomas, who recorded his ballet with the London Symphony Orchestra. It's also clear that he has little notion of classical structure or the basic rules of harmony.

That having been said, his own good musical sense and his seemingly innate knowledge of the improvisational "rules" of jazz have eased Mr. Costello's crossover journey and made "Il Sogno" a pleasant and interesting experience, if not an earth-shattering one.

In his latest crossover CD, "My Flame Burns Blue," just issued by Deutsche Grammophon and featuring live performances with the Metropole Orkest, Mr. Costello may have created a true breakthrough recording. Consisting of 14 tracks of new and old songs, mostly his own with a few composed by or with others, Mr. Costello has created a fascinating melange of jazz, Latin pop and modernist tonal essays that at times approach the edginess of Bela Bartok or the noirish qualities of hard-boiled detective movies.

Indeed, what's striking about this collection is how well it works as an album, like a formal program of art songs wafting in the alcoholic haze of a smoky, pre-tobacco-lawsuit club. The supple Metropole Orkest provides canny atmospherics, aided and abetted by Mr. Costello's raspy baritone and ability to sell a song.

Selections range from such raucous numbers as a sexy arrangement of "Clubland," a dramatic interpretation of "Episode of Blonde," and a nearly scat "Hora Decubitus," to moodier pieces like "Upon a Veil of Midnight Blue" and "Almost Blue" with their lengthy, near-symphonic instrumental preambles updated with a dash of early black-and-white TV ambience.

Indeed, this collection is an almost eerie re-creation of the kind of 1950s nonrock music that seems lost in the mists of time. Detective shows, variety shows and kinescope recordings of live dramas with musical backgrounds were staples of early television. And TV music, an odd blending of fading big-band, early rock, experimental jazz, and urban bebop created surprisingly dark and lonely moods in a decade inaccurately dismissed for its supposed vapidity.

Yet this was also the decade into which Mr. Costello — the former Declan Patrick MacManus — was born. The '50s, along with the MacManus family's background in Euro-jazz, are clear influences on this CD. It is as good a re-imagining of this complex decade as one is going to get, short of finding an attic cache of old 45s.

Mr. Costello may be disappointing his old fans yet again with this material. But clearly, unlike Mick Jagger and many others, he has made at least an interim decision to grow up and move on with his music. With this CD, he just might find his new audience, more interested in listening and thinking than in destroying what's left of their hearing with the same old indistinguishable noise.

The CD comes with a second bonus CD containing excerpts from the aforementioned "Il Sogno." If you're sick of the same old, "My Flame Burns Blue" is a pretty good way to break out of your rut.

MistakenForLilies wrote:I've just gotten my Japanese copy and a few of the errors in the printed lyrics are pretty laughable.

Sorry for the lack of timeliness in this context, but I had to relate this.

Back in the day, I used to send away, at great expense, for Japanese vinyl pressings of Costello's new releases, as the quality was always heads above all others -- particularly the generally DISGRACEFUL American pressings.

Anyway, upon the arrival of my Japanese version of "Almost Blue" in '81, I was perusing the English transcription of the lyrics with my initial listen, and (I kid you not) the corresponding follow-up line in "Why Don't You Love Me (Like You used To Do)?" was printed as.........wait for it.........

MistakenForLilies wrote:I've just gotten my Japanese copy and a few of the errors in the printed lyrics are pretty laughable.

Sorry for the lack of timeliness in this context, but I had to relate this.

Back in the day, I used to send away, at great expense, for Japanese vinyl pressings of Costello's new releases, as the quality was always heads above all others -- particularly the generally DISGRACEFUL American pressings.

Anyway, upon the arrival of my Japanese version of "Almost Blue" in '81, I was perusing the English transcription of the lyrics with my initial listen, and (I kid you not) the corresponding follow-up line in "Why Don't You Love Me (Like You used To Do)?" was printed as.........wait for it.........

"How come you treat me like a One-Eyed-Jew."!!!....

A nod to Sammy Davis Jr., perhaps?

Tough to beat that one...

I could be wrong here, but I think that may have been the actual original lyric that Hank Williams wrote.